William and Mary yo-yo guy has made himself into a world-class talent

Sebastian Brock, a junior at the College of William and Mary, has reached world-ranked status with his yo-yo tricks. He has placed third in the world and second in the country in recent competitions.

Sebastian Brock, a junior at the College of William and Mary, has reached world-ranked status with his yo-yo tricks. He has placed third in the world and second in the country in recent competitions. (Adrin Snider, Daily Press)

Sebastian Brock stands at the top of a large spiral staircase guiding a silvery blue yo-yo back and forth through space — seemingly oblivious to the light pouring down from the glass roof of the cavernous Sadler Center.

As he tosses, loops, passes and whips the shiny orb through its flight, the shadows of his hands dart rhythmically across the surface of the landing. Small bursts of light reflect off the whirling metallic surface of the yo-yo every time it passes through a sunbeam.

Neither distraction seems to affect the 20-year-old College of William and Mary student, however, as he links trick after trick into a wonderfully smooth demonstration of muscle memory, creativity and gyroscope physics. Instead the expression on his bearded face looks both focused and relaxed — even after he starts talking.

Two years ago, Brock placed third in the world yo-yo championships — and second in the nationals. Not long before that he hooked up with Caribou Lodge Yo-Yo Works and joined its red-hot team of professional yo-yo players.

Even at the top of his game, however, the young man talented enough to have his own signature yo-yo — known as the Bassalope — confesses he's still learning.

"When you get to the point where you've mastered all the basic tricks — and you start understanding how to make your own — that was a big milestone for me. After that, the floodgates just opened," Brock says.

"What you can do with the yo-yo is limitless. Every day I discover something new."

Brock's first encounter with the yo-yo came at the age of 8 or 9, when he took one from his mom's Fredericksburg toy store and started to teach himself the fundamentals.

"Sebby picked it up very quickly," says his dad, Michael, who showed his boy such basic tricks as how to throw a loop and walk the dog. "After two weeks, he just passed us and left us behind."

So rapidly did Brock progress that he stood out immediately when Springfield yo-yo ace Dick Stohr — a nationally known player and judge — stopped by the store to give a demonstration.

"There was this little kid there in the audience, and he'd learned to throw the yo-yo — sort of. So I gave him some tips," Stohr recalls. "He was very interested, very observant and very adept at making adjustments."

Despite this early show of talent, Brock moved onto other toys after six or seven months — and he showed no further curiosity about the yo-yo for years.

Not until his mom closed her store in 2004 did the 14-year-old teen reacquaint himself with her remaining yo-yo stock, which ranged from popular Yo-Mega Fireballs to old-school Duncans.

"I have no clue why it stuck the second time around. But I was pretty relentless," he says.

"It was during the summer, so I had nothing else to do. And I just sat there for 4 or 5 hours a day watching how-to-videos and learning how to do things myself."

That obsession led to increasingly more difficult tricks, each of which Brock practiced until he had it mastered. Then he began e-mailing players he'd seen on the Web in search of harder tests — prompting a few competition-level figures to suggest that he was good enough to start coming up with his own feats of yo-yo magic.

Brock responded diligently, developing what became a 3-minute-long routine of both original and borrowed tricks strung together with his signature focus on consistent execution and a rhythmically creative performance.

But he didn't try it out in public until his father convinced him to enter a regional competition in Delaware not long after the summer ended.

There, the young man stood in awe as he watched the warm-ups and then the performances of the players he'd studied so fervently on the Internet. When his time came, moreover, he rushed through his routine so quickly that he had to ad-lib in order to fill the waning seconds of the entire 3 minutes.

As the judges began announcing the top 10 places in reverse order, Brock and his dad became resigned when they didn't hear his name somewhere at the bottom of the list.

They could hardly believe it when — a few seconds later — the judges arrived at third place and said, "Sebastian Brock."

"When we didn't hear my name, my dad wondered if I'd been forgotten," Brock recalls. "But I ended up placing third — above a guy who had placed fifth in the world. I was ecstatic."

Since then, Brock has won awards at the European championship as well as the national and world levels.

He's also honed his skills so sharply that Stohr calls him not just a "world-class" talent but also one who's showing signs he can "move ahead of the rest of the yo-yo world."

"Many players are just about speed. But Sebby doesn't have to be fast to be good," he says.

"He's not all bang, bang, bang. He's deliberate in places and fast when he needs to be — so he gets a lot of extra performance points for his presentation."

Exactly where Brock will go from here remains to be decided.

Last fall, the government and film studies double major appeared on CBS Sunday Morning while preparing for a national competition. He's also signed an agreement with a Washington, D.C., agency that represents entertainers.

The yo-yo he helped develop has become a popular seller, too, sparking more than its fair share of admiring e-mail reviews on the message boards of YoYo Nation. So he's not likely to stop throwing his small, smooth-spinning, butterfly-shaped wonder toy any time soon.

"I still practice all the time," he says — "probably more than I'm willing to admit."